Re: <nettime> Lev on the embarressment of digital art

As I understand it, Lev Manovich set out to define New Media Art using modernist criteria - notably the tautological gesture whereby the artwork refers to its own components, or its so-called "conditions of possibility."

However, as Steve Kurtz, Molly Hankwitz and John Hopkins have pointed out, most of the artists actually using computerized media, even back in those heavily hyped days of the 1990s and the early 2000s when "New Media" was promoted as a category, were interested in communication and interaction, often around a theme or a specific situation. They wanted to put their creativity, not into the shaping of the object, but into the co-creation of the circuit or the field of interaction that the art helped link together -- even though no individual and certainly no artwork could claim to originate or control this milieu of interaction.

One of media philosopher Bernard Steigler's most important insights has been that invention happens not in the subjective depths of an individual, but in the open space of a milieu - that zone or wavelength where people resonate with each other and something new emerges. The milieu is alive, it's emergent, it's multiple, it's dispersed, and it's a world still barely describable in the clumsy Western languages dominated by methodological individualism.

Is it any wonder that many of these interactive works don't look so great in a museum? If they do look good, it's because they included a museum component, which was often a strategic decision toward a powerful and ubiquitous funding institution. Nonetheless, it's not a decision that underlines their most important characteristic, which is to work in the middle, between subjectivities. The art object had to look good in a museum because no one in there could be counted on to realize what the media work was really doing, what it was engaged with, where it was dissolving into co-creation.

Is it any wonder, then, that many of the most innovative figures didn't bother making work for the museum? A new gaze, a new vocabulary, a new set of criteria for art were being developed somewhere else, in the milieu of interaction. Certain museums and art spaces did follow, and gradually a new gaze, a new language and new evaluative criteria have gradually taken form.

What's no wonder at all, though, is the sadness of old white guys who want the world to fit into their definitions, their institutions, and their pocketbooks. Modernist criteria served these sad old white guys very well -- or very badly, depending on how you look at it. As our civilization dies, our institutions are still celebrating the values, the taste and the philosophy that are killing us.

I don't have a good read of Lev Manovich because I always got bored with his books. Certainly he has a predilection for modernist vanguards that are more about infinite differentiation than sheer tautology. What I never spotted, however, was an interest in changing the root definition of what art is and what it does -- and above all, where, how, with whom and why it does what it does today.

best, Brian

On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 6:53 PM John Hopkins <jhopkins@neoscenes.net> wrote:

On 20/Sep/20 14:12, Molly Hankwitz wrote:
> Dear Geert, Lev, nettime...ok, I take the bait...!!!

thanks Molly, et al...

Important point -- that the use of networked/digital communications tools was
the core (or at least peripheral) for some 'digital' works -- most of them
forgotten -- except in their power to facilitate human encounter and possibly
sustained connection, and thus, life-change. But then again, communications, for
a human, always begins and ends up analog.

Items/events/encounters/projects that jump to mind with unequal, though
demonstrated life-changing effect for participants (self being one of those):
waterwheel; Polar Circuit; ReLab; MUUMedia; radiostadt1; RAM; the NICE network;
nettime; Open-X; aural degustation; SiTO/OTiS; soundcamp; world listening day;
pixelache; beauty & the East; ADA; Bed-in for peace NZ; bricolabs; cafe9.net;
radiophrenia; digitalchaos; dkfrf; world-wide-simultaneous-dance;
what-are-we-eating; Port MIT; audioblast; ethernity; di-fusion 1&2; expand;
gimokud; keyworx; kidsconnect; SolarCurcuit; various kunstradio projects;
locussonus; meet-to-delete; microsound; migrating art academies; mute sounds;
net.sauna; netarts machida; netbase; nomusic; placard; ANAT; overgaden sound
festival; PNEK; TEKs; Atelier Nord; remote-tv; RIXC; send&receive; shareNY, et
al; aporee::maps; superfactory; techno-shamanism; telejam; anatomix; telakka;
thebox; virtualteams; visitorstudio; ... I could go on ...

Those folks in it (mostly) for personal gain, 'influence', and notoriety missed
this potential for sustained human connection, and at career's end find
themselves lonely -- "friended" but w/o any real friends -- all the folks
tread-upon in the climb to 'fame' (what's a name?).

And, Lev, really, at least you were able to convert whatever it was into tenure,
and a robust pension, unlike most folks! Good unless the state completely fails!

JH

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